How a Wiring Rack Should Look

Julie Jacobson writes, "It's so much fun to deride some of the worst home wiring jobs in existence. But once in awhile, we should salute some of the cleanest, most perfectly labeled cabling jobs in U.S. homes. At the recent CEDIA Expo, the association for home-technology integrators handed out awards for the Best Dressed Systems, each featuring miles of cable, hundreds of connectors, tons of steel, and a clean aesthetic that could make the most finicky designer swoon. Show them to your own installer for inspiration."

Comments

Neatness is good, but ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... there is such a thing as carrying it too far. I'm reminded of the tale of the junior sysadmin who proudly showed the senior sysadmin the cabinet he'd just wired up. Very neat, very pretty.

The senior sysadmin looked at it thoughtfully, then flipped a single switch. Every server in the cabinet went down. Yup: every server had its entire power source coming from a single rail, instead of having the two redundant inputs coming from different rails.

Where I work, every cable to every server in the machine room is labelled at both ends. The patch panels are also labelled with the address of the other end of the cable. Makes troubleshooting network problems a lot simpler (and that's important when you're talking over 200 servers on the floor ...)

Neat != Usable

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd actually argue that although some of the wire racks pictured look nice they're unusable - you'd have to snip all of those zip-ties to trace a cable. If letting the cable lie in the wire management isn't good enough Velcro would be better, and less likely to be over tightened to the point of pulling the cat5 twists out of spec.

In our computer room I just provide plenty of wire management, a wide assortment of cable lengths, and a picture of the wedgie I gave the last admin who kludged something 'for testing' and left it that way for months.

Re:Neat != Usable

[curtlewis]

Exactly, you need to be able to get to any cable. Zip ties are single use. Velcro rip ties, while more expensive, are reusuable.

And talk about overkill on that one 24 port switch or whatever it was. They used at least 24 zip ties, one for each cable and some doubles. Don't you think one every 2-4 would have done just as good a job? Instead, they completely locked down the cable making any troubleshooting a nightmare. Three well placed ripties would do a fine job, keep it orderly AND maintainable. Especially if the ties were long enough to have additional room for growth.

The Obsessive and Aging

[NotQuiteReal]

You know, those with obsessive compulsive disorder can get really really bad about it... or get over it.

I didn't Read either of TFA, because they seem to be slashdotted at the moment.

However, after years and years of living, I can tell you that "if a job is worth doing, it is worth doing well" is just not true. Sometimes doing a job "good enough" is more than enough. It might get torn down next week. If you wash the windows "OK", that is probably good enough, they'll be dirty again soon enough.

It all depends on what you are doing. Building a house? Do it well. Wiring a computer cabinet? Pfft - make it good enought for a few years. It will change. RS-232, thin-wire, thick-wire, 10BaseT, Cat 3, Cat 5, Cat 5e... Fibre... whatever.

If you can do a 90% job for half the cost you will have enough left over to do another 90% job of something twice as good 4 years from now.

Maybe. YMMV.

Looks good ONCE, and only once.

[Kadin2048]

To a limited extent, I agree.

Neatness is one thing, but those examples just look like an advertising photo for nylon wire ties. I mean, they look nice now, but what happens when you need to move one of those connections around, say from one port to another?

You'd have to cut 50 different ties, and all the wires are cut to such precise lengths, you'd probably end up having to splice some sort of nasty extender in there (adding a significant insertion loss due to the connectors or splice). It would be a total mess. Having everything wired in drum-tight may look nice, but it's a bitch later on. Something that has more "drip loops" before all the wires get bundled up into single harnesses may not look quite as polished initially, but it's far easier to work on down the road.

I've worked on audio systems like this, and it always strikes me as something that you'd do if you were a contractor working on a one-shot job, something where you want to impress the client and justify your fee, with no real thought to maintenance later.

Re:Looks good ONCE, and only once.

[iamlucky13]

That's exactly what I was thinking while looking at those pictures.

Half of the purpose of having neat wiring is maintainability (in addition to aesthetics, air flow, and just plain keeping crap out of the way of other things). That setup is almost as unmaintainable as a wall draped in spaghetti. I at least hope they either have good documentation kept up to date to match the small fortune and abundant time they spent on zip-ties or else have both ends of their cables labeled so they know which cable to yank once they do cut all those zip ties, because you aren't going to trace those out by hand.

I guess if your system is perfect and you have no need to ever replace equipment or expand, this is fine, but for the rest of us, give us some service loops and removable wire clips.

Re:Ahh... messy racks...

[smcn]

Have you ever noticed, anybody who has less wires running through their home than you is a newbie, and anyone who has more wires is a maniac?